I think a power surge blew my PCB. I have video on the drive and would like to get it, but the price of recovery makes me shift towards DYI rescue. I happen to have another Samsung 1TB different release date. Switched the PCB, powered up the drive and in was spinning without strange noises or smoke. Computer did not recognize the drive, tried it on a Mac and a Vista 64x, firewire 800, eSata and USB and nada. So probably the wrong PCB firmware and maybe more. The question, if I go hunting around for the same drive, what numbers am I trying to match? Here are the front and back of the drive that is broken. Searched all over the web and still could not figure it out.
Thanks for any help.
SAMSUNG SpinPoint MT2 HM100UI 1TB 5400 RPM

upload another photo for the pcb from the other side

does it spin with its original pcb? sounds normal or totally dead?

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Kuwait Data Recovery - UNIX GTC
The only reason for time is so that everything doesn't happen at once. By: Albert Einstein

A straight pcb swap most probably won't work.

As requested the PCB. Totally dead with the original PCB no sound, no vibration just sadly silent. Spins with the other PCB from my newer drive and no strange clicking etc.

Put a photo of the same PCB in twice so it was easier to read the codes.

Thanks

You need to transfer the 8-pin serial flash memory chip, or its contents, from patient to donor. This chip stores unique, drive specific information. It is located below the Marvell MCU (big "M") in your first photo, and has a "25" in its part number. Your local TV/AV repair shop should be able to do this for you.

However, before going ahead with the swap, can you zoom up on the area around the ESMT SDRAM chip, especially the left and top sides? There may be some protection devices, such as fuses or diodes.

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A backup a day keeps DR away.

you will need a Pro. to move it and be careful when doing so. i prefer to ask any pro. electronics guy if you dono how to do it.

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Kuwait Data Recovery - UNIX GTC
The only reason for time is so that everything doesn't happen at once. By: Albert Einstein

Not to mention the chip looks like a BGA, which should be taken into consideration.

@Jar:

Just FYI, since we can see pads (along 2 edges) and for that specific component, it'll be a WSON package (one of the QFN family of packages). Agreed that this needs to be considered, especially if Samsung chose to solder the bottom pad to the PCB.

Not sure what edges you meant so I just took some up close shots. Hope that helps unravel the solution.

in your second image there, you have just that one component, you can see that there are 4 pins on either side, the chip says


Thats the guy he's referring to, it may have a pad on the bottom of it as well (IIRC it would be a grounding pad). you'll notice too that the arms wrap up under the component and there are some caps and resistors right next to the arms. this is definitely not a DIY, and most pros wouldnt want to do it either, unless they could do a partial reflow of the board. i hate to sound like a pessimist but assuming that component is moved successfully it may well be fried too.

μgrippers w/good programmer and you could try ISP read/write...though probably cheaper to bring to a pro than buy good programmer....

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http://pcrecoveryllc.com

The thread starter was only asking how to identify the PCB maybe to buy a new one (?). The answer is

MT2 S3M Rev.01 R00

= an identical PCB from identical drive. BUT don't expect a straight swap to work.

About the rest :
A recurrent opinion is that "local TV/AV shop can swap the chips" : here they usually don't and seems in a lot more places don't either . Better luck with 2nd or 3rd level cellular phone repair , assuming they listen to average joe , but for a single PCB they charge a lot as it is supposed to do because of taxes and labor cost. Moreover, it may still be useless in this case
I do PCB repair but only as DR related (to make the drive to be recovered work) OR in batch - to make the whole thing convenient. Otherwise I don't ever think to flick the equipment switch on (except rare "pro bono days"). pcrecovery is right about the idea of microgrippers and programmers, but we both know the cost , isn't it ?

Can you read the number on the flash chip?

Is it 25X40AL<space>IG ?

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A backup a day keeps DR away.

Hey folks, I did not realize I got so many reply's because for some reason the HDDGURU thread did not send me a notification of new comments. I really appreciate the help and wanted to acknowledge those of you who took the time to comment.

Alas I may never see this piece of my documentary footage from India. I took a chance although I new better and had mirrored copies of everything except this drive because I was running out of HDD space. I did not have enough room on any other drives to move the footage and this is the result.

Same here, any help on this is much appreciated, I have the same portable drive and just today it stopped working. I have really important data that I'd like to save if a PCB swap could work.

I have an identical drive (same PCB) which suddenly stopped working during it`s first cut & paste job.
(Before that there was only data written to it for like 3 months and never ever something deleted.)
After the first 5 jpegs the drives driveletter just dissapeared from windows and it popped back up "not formated" message.
Now fitted as an internal drive it even prevents my system to reach the bios. There is no click of death...
Externaly, via usb enclosure, Testdisk can still find a working partiotion table, but reads are horribly slow and generate errors. Files copied vie Testdisk show random errors and each time a different MD5 checksum for bigger files.
Because of the very slow access rate, preventing my sytem even to reach the bios and random recovery errors i hope fo a PCB defect and have an identical drive rolling in.

The Winbond chip is the W25X40BLIG with this pin lay-out:

http://www.dz863.com/pinout-82887663-W25X10BL/

So looks like it`s not a BGA package... THANK GOD!

Any ideas on this case from the pros before i go ahead with a PCB swap?

HUGE THX in advance!

Took like ages to get the identical board...

But the good news is that the board-swap works directly without any soldering required...now it´s time to find out if that solves the issues or if it needs to be fixed from the inside...any pros here from Bangalore who can do an inside-job. Have an identical drive for head replacement etc...

He's not in your neighbourhood, but in India there is Amarbir S Dhillon:
http://www.chandigarhdatarecovery.com
member5486.html

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A backup a day keeps DR away.

Hallo,
I think I have the same problem as exposed here with the same HDD.
ToddCW, how did you finally overcome your problem? Where did you find that PCB? Anyone can give me a hint?
Thank you in advance.

Hi,

I have exactlty the same problem and same HDD.
Did you find a new PCB? I'm looking on Google for days now and I can't find one...

Thanks,